


Three Wishes

by GenericUsername01



Series: PRIDE MONTH [6]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Aladdin's Lamp, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, Hellguard, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Thieurrull, Trans girl Saavik, i don't show anything too bad happening directly to saavik in this, in the past and not to Saavik don't worry, pride month writing prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-18 22:23:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericUsername01/pseuds/GenericUsername01
Summary: Prompt: DiscoverySaavik is a nine-year-old prisoner on Hellguard being subjected to regular experimentation. She knows she will die soon. But then she finds an ancient meditation lamp, and when she goes to clean it, a strange-looking girl pops out. She tells Saavik she will grant her any three wishes she can think of.





	Three Wishes

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so going by TOS birthdates, Saavik will be born one year after Beyond and Demora /should/ be born six years after that, but instead she looked about four years old in Beyond. Basically Beyond was a mess for the timeline, and in AOS, Demora was born ten or eleven years early. I think.
> 
> So I have elected to ignore everything canon about Demora's age and just make her two years older than Saavik. This takes place ten years after Beyond.
> 
> Charvanek is the Romulan commander from the TOS episode the Enterprise Incident and for the purposes of this fic, she's Saavik's mom and in charge of the Hellguard facility

Saavik stumbled as she was shoved back into her cell, catching herself just inches from colliding with the ground entirely, scraping her palms and knees on the sharp stone. She jumped back up in an instant and shot the guard her most poisonous glare, but she didn't dare talk back.

No. Go'vinnai had talked back, had resisted. Refused to follow an order. Now Go'vinnai was dead.

That was what happened, and Saavik had seen it too many times to count. But Go'vinnai had been different. They had mattered. They had been the only biological family Saavik had left, after Charvanek had killed their Vulcan father.

And Saavik refused to call Charvanek family. Forcing herself on a Vulcan in pon farr and then having the children produced delivered via an artificial womb did not make someone a mother. That made her a rapist and murderer. Not family. And Saavik hated, hated,  _hated_ the familial bond she had to her, the one she was too unskilled to sever on her own.

Go'vinnai had had their bond to her until their death. Their last thought had been one of perverse satisfaction and pleasure-- that as they lay dying from repeated electric shock, they knew that pain was travelling through the bond and that Charvanek would feel the agony of their death, too.

Saavik had felt the pain as well, but beyond that, she felt elation at her older sibling's last act of rebellion.

Before they died, Go'vinnai had made Saavik promise that she would never stop fighting. That she would do whatever she had to live. That she would someday make it off this horrible planet and escape to freedom and live to tell the tale. Saavik had sworn on their sibling bond that she would do exactly that.

She didn't quite have a plan yet. She was only nine, though. She would come up with one eventually. And until then, she would put on a pretense. She would be placid, submissive, obedient. As much as she was capable of, anyway.

She would get out of here eventually.

She crawled into the back corner of her cell and settled into the meditation pose her father had once shown her.

* * *

It happened all at once.

One day, everything was normal. The next, the children woke up and all their Romulan captors were gone. Not a single one remained in the whole facility. It was a ghost town. They had disappeared in the night and left the hybrid children to rot in their cages.

All the Vulcan adults had been killed long ago, of course. Only their hybrid offspring remained at this point.

Within five hours, a teenage boy named Sgon came into Saavik's cell block and opened all the cages. He had been working on breaking out of his own for a while. He gave them instructions on how to help free others from their cages, but most of the children bolted as soon as they were free.

Saavik stuck by Sgon's side and helped open cages.

It was... easy. Too easy. Surely the Romulans hadn't just... left? Why would they do that? Sure, their experiments had been largely unsuccessful and they had been running out of things to test, but why would they leave such an obvious loose end? Why hadn't they executed all of them?

"What's your name, kid?" Sgon asked.

"Saavik," she said. He nodded.

"Well, Saavik. Looks like you're my second-in-command now."

She arched an eyebrow. "You think you're in charge?"

He shrugged. "Someone has to be. And everyone else is just looking out for themselves."

* * *

They acquired a small band of followers, all of them younger than Sgon and most looking at him with something akin to hero-worship. They opened 97 cages. Including Sgon and Saavik, the number of kids who decided to stick together was twenty-one. The rest rushed out of there and off to who-knows-where the second their cage doors were pulled open.

The facility was entirely underground, and the adults had turned off all the lights when they left. Sgon led his band of kids through darkened hallways and up stairwell after stairwell. He seemed to know where he was going.

Saavik soon realized that he was putting on a pretense too.

Their footsteps were silent, cautious, quieter than the skittering rodents all around them. They had the caution of prey animals who had learned to expect predators. Their journey up through the testing facility was a slow one, full of long pauses and looking around corners and Sgon signalling them all to stop whenever he thought he heard something.

He opened a door slowly, carefully, and blinding light poured in through the crack. A child at Saavik's side failed to stifle a gasp.

Sgon swung the door open all the way.

For the first time in their life, they saw the outdoors.

The sky was a putrid greenish-yellow color, covered by a blanket of clouds that left the air chilled. The ground was broken and jagged, made entirely of rocks. The only vegetation or sign of any life at all was the occasional thistle.

It was so, so  _bright._

They filtered out cautiously, pouring out of the facility.

Saavik's eyes actually  _hurt_ from the intensity of the light. The wind moved her hair slightly.  _Wind._

She ran her fingers through the air in wonder, absorbing the sensation, as if she could catch the wind and hold it.

There wasn't a single Romulan soul in sight.

_This was real._

Suddenly they were whooping, screaming and shouting, running over everything and looking all around them, just experiencing the world. Saavik laughed in giddy delight. They were all smiling, beaming, some of them were crying.

This was real.

* * *

Night fell, and Sgon herded them all back up, even though Saavik and most of the others felt like they could keep playing for hours, maybe the rest of their lives.

Sgon sat down in a meditation pose and his band of children all followed suit, forming a loose circle.

"Okay," he said. "We're free. They left. We don't know if or when they'll be back, but we need to take advantage of this opportunity either way. Thieurrull is an unclaimed planet in the Neutral Zone. We're right next to Federation space. If we can somehow send out a distress signal, they might just come and save us."

"But won't the Empire intercept it too?" T'Vchon asked. "If they find out we're trying to escape, they'll come back and kill us."

"You don't know that," Stridvak said.

"Yes, I do. Think about it. How do you think the Federation will react if they find out about us? The Romulan Star Empire captured four Vulcan science vessels and forcibly bred their captives to create hybrids they could experiment on. We were designed to improve the Romulan race. To see if Romulans could be given Vulcan telepathy. We're essentially bioweapons for a war that hasn't started, and if the Federation finds out about that..." T'Vchon trailed off.

"War will break out," T'Mai said. She was the second oldest at sixteen, one year younger than Sgon. Those were the first words anybody had heard her speak.

Three weeks ago, the moderators took her away to a private experimentation room and kept her in there for 36 hours. She came back with a dead, flat look in her eye and hadn't said a word since. She'd barely been eating and was getting sicker and sicker as more time passed.

No one dared ask what had happened.

"Doesn't the Empire  _want_ war?" Sednar-- one of the twins-- asked in his childlike voice. "Isn't that the point of all this?"

"No," Sgon said. "No, that's not it. They want war, of course they do-- they're Romulans, but last time they went up against the Federation, it decimated both sides and ended in a ceasefire and a Neutral Zone that neither side can enter into. When the Empire goes to war again, they'll do it on their own terms, when they're good and ready and sure they'll win. To bring honor to the Praetor, it is necessary. Defeat is unacceptable. They won't chance it."

"Death before defeat," T'Vau muttered, a familiar phrase. But it was, of course, the highest honor to die in battle, securing victory for the Empire.

Romulans were not subtle. But they were very, very calculating. With the strength and intelligence of their Vulcan cousins, they made a most formidable enemy. Even the Federation, with all their member planets and the Vulcans themselves on their side, could not defeat them. They had a streak of cunning ruthlessness that the Federation found... distasteful.

But for all their conquering, the Romulans did remain logical about it. They did not provoke war needlessly. They simply stole in quietly and accumulated power unnoticed until they were unstoppable. They were not the Klingons, after all. There was honor in battle, but there was greater honor in coldly efficient and bloodless conquest. Sentient beings were a useful resource, after all, and it was best not to waste resources.

Strength tempered by intelligence and control is far more dangerous than strength alone.

"So, we won't be sending a distress signal?" T'Diisth asked, folding her arms.

"No, we will," Sgon said. "We've just got to be prepared for all-out war to break out over our heads first."

* * *

There was not much on Thieurrull. Rocks and thistles pretty much, and the thistles were rare.

They slept outside, huddled together but still shivering, refusing to go back into the facility for anything. The heat had been turned off when the adults left anyway. It would only be marginally warmer.

By the time morning came, they had forgotten all thoughts of building a distress signal. They needed food and water. Immediately.

There were no replicators in the facility. The scientists and moderators hadn't lived there; just the experiments had. The workers had beamed down every day to report to work from a starship kept in geosynchronous orbit.

The ship was gone now, and all the food with it.

There weren't even fully-equipped bathrooms back in the facility. There wasn't a sink in the whole building. There were safety showers in some of the labs, sure, but they were sonic. Whenever an experiment required water, it had been brought down from the ship. Most experiments weren't of that nature anyway. Though Saavik did remember seeing a few prisoners be tortured with water on occasion.

Synak estimated they had eleven days before they began to die of thirst. It would kill them far sooner than the hunger would.

Sgon dispersed all the children to go out searching for water in pairs, sending them all off in different directions and making sure the younger ones were paired with an appropriately older one. Since Saavik had proven herself useful at hacking through the magno-locks on the cages, Sgon took her with him to try and build a distress signal.

They went back into the facility.

Saavik glanced up at Sgon and he looked like a Vulcan, a real one, emotionless and unreadable. She tried to imitate.

She could do this. It was just a building.

It was just a building.

They went to the third level, where they knew the computer lab to be. Sgon began sifting through drawers and pulling out components and tools. He sent Saavik into the next room to do the same thing, giving her instructions on what to look for.

She climbed up onto a counter to reach the upper cabinets. She pulled one open and it was full of-- Vulcan artifacts.

Her heart panged in her side.

She pulled out a folded up piece of clothing. It unfurled into a long robe of rich, plush fabric.

It smelled like something foreign and smoky and entirely out of place in a science lab. She pressed her face into it.

It sort of smelled like her dad.

The robe was clearly meant to be worn by someone a good foot taller than her, but Saavik didn't care, she scrambled off of the counter and shed her grimy, torn-up hospital gown instantly. She slipped the robe on over her shoulders, buttoning it up the center and tying the sash at her waist. It was so soft and so warm and so  _Vulcan._

It was illogical to miss a place she had never been to. On the few and rare occasions she had been good enough to be allowed to speak to her dad, he had always stressed the importance of logic, of following the teachings of Surak. If she could hold onto her logic, she could make it off of Thieurrull alive. With her mind intact.

Pain was a thing of the mind. The mind could be controlled. Or so her dad had said.

She wrapped the robe around herself like a hug and pushed the memory aside. She didn't quite know what it meant to be Vulcan rather than Romulan, except that she wanted to be, and Vulcans were logical. So Saavik would be logical.

She hiked the robe up and climbed back onto the counter. She was going to look at every single thing in every single cabinet. She would soak up every small scrap of Vulcan culture that she could get.

The next thing she pulled out was a square mat of stiff, woven fabric. She had absolutely no clue what it was for, and so she moved on.

She found a bottle of something that smelled strongly and had strange script on it. Vulcan words. She traced her finger over the lettering, the intricate lines and circles.

All this must have been plundered from the captured ships, she realized. Why had it been saved? Why not let it burn when they shot those science vessels into oblivion, hitting with phaser beam after phaser beam until they were nothing more than space rubble?

Maybe it had been a reward, she  realized. When she was good, she got to see her dad. Maybe when the Vulcans were good, they got to have some of their stuff back. She knew that not all of the kids had been good enough to get to see their Vulcan parents. So their parents would have had to be rewarded in different ways.

The next thing she pulled out was some sort of... lamp? Dish? It had a handle and a tapered spout on the end.

It was also covered in dust, much like the bottle of smelly liquid. They seemed to go together, somehow. She rubbed them both clean with her discarded hospital gown, not wanting to dirty the sleeve of her robe.

The second she ran her hands over the lamp, it started to shake and hiss. She dropped it immediately, and it continued clattering and moving on the floor. Purple smoke started puffing out, and Saavik took a few hesitant steps backwards.

Her heart pounded, but she refused to leave the room.

The smoke became a cloud, swirling in place above the lamp, seeming to spark with energy. It was enchanting.

With one last great puff, the smoke suddenly dissipated, revealing a strange-looking girl levitating where it had been. She fell to the floor gracefully. Saavik gaped.

The girl was not much older than she was. She had pure black hair, as dark as any Vulcan's and darker even than Saavik's. Her skin had a strange hue to it, the slightest tinge of pink. Her eyes were dark too, and had the epicanthal fold of the dark-skinned Romulans of the northern provinces. Her ear tips were  _rounded,_ in short, blunt tips-- the strangest feature on a sentient being that Saavik had ever seen.

She was staring, mouth hanging open slightly.

The girl gave a small salute, waving her hand to the side, then coughed out a residual puff of purple smoke. "Hi," she said. "I am the Creature of the Lamp. I come to serve."

Saavik continued to stare dumbly.

The Creature of the Lamp looked at her expectantly. "Well?"

"Well, what?" Saavik asked.

"What are your wishes?"

"Wishes?"

"Yeah. Didn't you read the instructions?"

"What instructions?"

The girl picked up the bottle of scented liquid and pointed to the label on it, with the words in Vulcan script. "These instructions. They should appear to you in the language of your heart, did something go wrong or something? You do recognize the language, right?"

"I do," she said. "But I can't read. At all."

The girl's eyes widened, and she looked around for the first time, taking in their surroundings. "Where are we?" she asked. "Last time I came out it was Vulcan's twelfth century and the asenoi was being taken to the P'Jem Monastery. You know, by Andoria?"

Saavik didn't follow a single word of that sentence. "Uh," she said. "Asenoi?"

"The fire pot. For meditation. This thing." She held up the lamp. "You pour the incense into it, take the top off, and watch the flame while meditating."

"...Oh."

Now the girl turned that searing attention to her. "What is this place? It has bad energy. There is darkness in the emotions here. Many katras have been abandoned."

"This is Thieurrull, the doorway to hell. The planet stands sentry between the Empire and the Federation."

"Federation?" She shook her head. "I think it's been a while. Anyway, the instructions. Rub the asenoi and you summon the Creature of the Lamp. I will now grant you any three wishes you can think of."

"Any?" Saavik's eyes widened.

"There are some restrictions," the Creature amended. "You can't wish for more wishes. You can't wish for someone to fall in love with you. And you can't wish anyone back from the dead."

Saavik's heart sank. "So my family," she said. "My father and my sibling. They're gone for good. There's no bringing them back."

The girl looked at her softly. "Yes," she said. "I'm sorry."

Saavik nodded. It had been a brief hope. She hadn't felt it long enough for the disappointment to be too acute, but it was still there.

And she knew exactly what she wanted her first wish to be.

"I wish for all of us to survive and for the Federation to come and rescue us away from here."

Sgon burst into the room at that second. "Saavik, I think I've got it! I can build a distress beacon!"

The Creature smiled knowingly.

Sgon frowned. "What is all this stuff? And what are you wearing?"

"Um. I found it?" She glanced over at the Creature.

Sgon smiled fondly. "You were supposed to be looking for computer components."

Saavik hugged herself. "Well, I'm not taking it off."

He shook his head. "I wasn't asking you to. Come on, help me put this thing together."

He went back into the other room and Saavik turned to the Creature, a question in her eyes.

"Only you can see me," she said. "I will not leave your side until I have granted all three of your wishes."

Saavik nodded, tucked the fire pot into the folds of her robe, and hurried after Sgon.

* * *

T'Penn and T'Sahn found a freshwater stream populated by another encampment of eleven kids-- some of the ones who had scattered. They all linked up and bunkered down at the stream.

This was home now.

Sgon, Synak, and T'Vchon were able to cumulatively scrape together enough engineering knowledge to get the beacon up and running. Or allegedly running. They kept insisting that it might not work and they had know way of knowing, but Saavik knew, and she told them firmly that it  _was_ working.

They didn't believe her, and the Creature told her not to tell them about her. So she quietly seethed and insisted she was right, with no explanation.

They all laid down for the night, and Saavik slipped away from the crowd, wanting to talk to the Creature without getting weird stares.

"Do you have a name?" was the first thing she asked. "Other than the Creature of the Lamp?"

She shook her head. "I am immortal and not bound by the concepts of corporeal creatures. I exist on light and thought and wishes. I am free when I have a master, and I pull at the strings of the universe to grant them their desires."

"Then why do you look like an eleven-year-old girl?"

"I have appeared to you in the form of my very first master. She was a human child, and so I appear as a human child. Most find it comforting."

Saavik shook her head, deciding she could ask what a human was later, if she was still curious. "You never answered my question. Do you have a name?"

The girl appeared to think about it. "I have been known by many names. Most notably Her Perfection, the Being Most Excellent," she said. She added dryly, "I didn't choose it."

"Dah-marom."

"What?"

"Dah-marom. The Most Excellent," she said.

The girl laughed. "Yeah, sure. That'll work. Just call me Dah-marom."

Saavik nodded deeply, almost a bow. "Yes, Your Excellency. Can you tell me when my first wish will be granted?"

She shook her head. "No. I can never predict how wishes will be granted, only that they will be. You seem nice, so I'm going to give you a warning. You have to be very specific in what you wish for, because you'll get exactly that. It backfires on a lot of people. I don't want to see it happen to you, okay?"

"Okay," she said.

Dah-marom nodded. "Good. About your first wish, I don't know how long it'll be. You included in it that no one could die here, so you'll be rescued before the situation gets too dire. But if it's at all possible for you guys to find a way to survive on your own, rescue may be years out."

"What were my exact words?" Saavik asked.

"I wish for all of us to survive and for the Federation to come and rescue us away from here."

"That's pretty specific."

Dah-marom snorted. "Define 'here.' For all I know, you might not even make it out of this star system."

Saavik froze. Even with the Federation coming, the Romulan Empire might just be coming too. 

A battle between starships fought in the Neutral Zone. All those kids and hundreds of others too, blown to pieces and crushed in the vacuum of space. Her wish would get them rescued, sure, but it might be for nothing, and it might start a war in the process.

Her careless words could be responsible for the deaths of millions.

Dah-marom instantly regretted her words when she saw Saavik's reaction. "I didn't mean to upset you," she said. "I mean, that might not happen. Sometimes people's wishes go exactly how they want them too. Random chance is also a factor. Plus, other people not on this planet have their own motivations. I mean, maybe the best starship out there is on its way here right now and the, uh, Empire, you said? The Empire will be too scared to take them on."

* * *

They didn't find any food the next day. But they did find eight more mouths to not-feed.

Most of the kids were wandering around in the hopes of maybe finding a scraggly berry bush among the rocks or something. About 20-25 kids had stayed back at the stream to see if there was any way to prepare thistles to eat. So far, all experiments had resulted in bleeding tongues and vomiting. Not fun.

The searchers were using a loosely-interpreted buddy system in which they all spread out and covered as much ground as they could, but you had to stay within hearing distance of your buddy. Everyone had been told to let out a loud, shrill whistle every five minutes, and to double back to camp if they went ten minutes without hearing their buddy's whistle.

Sgon was Saavik's buddy because she was his little helper and second-in-command. They had been out here for hours already. So far, Saavik had found rocks and rocks and rocks. She had also discovered that Dah-marom's physical body was only an illusion and therefore she did not get tired, hungry, or thirsty. Which, good for her. Saavik was only slightly bitter.

She figured she could be excused for being cranky. She hadn't eaten anything in a whole two and a half days.

* * *

The day ended and a new one began.

Reality began to set in. They were no longer being experimented on nearly every day. They had... free time. To sit, alone with their thoughts.

The camp was constantly filled with near-hysterical chatter. Unfortunately, the only thing to really talk about that didn't send people into panic attacks was whether or not rescue was coming. It became a group obsession. Someone was almost always double-checking that the distress signal was on.

Four more kids trickled into the camp throughout the day. They were up to 44 now. Nearly half of the released experiments.

At around sundown, some of the kids tried to light a small pile of thistles on fire by banging two rocks together. It didn't work. It was just as cold as it had been the previous three nights.

* * *

Searching would be boring, hypothetically, if the novelty of simply being outdoors and not fearing for her life every second had worn off. But it hadn't. Saavik was absolutely enchanted by uneven ground, by the boulders and hills and crevasses. She was an explorer, free, with an infinite sky above her and around her. She could easily do this for the rest of her life.

Not that she wanted to. She would like to be rescued and never ever come back to this planet.

But maybe she could explore some others.

Two beams of gold light suddenly shimmered in front of her, glowing and growing steadily more solid. They began to take the forms of people, and Saavik scurried to hide behind a boulder. She peeped her head up cautiously to watch.

The light beams turned into two solid people. One looked like a normal sentient being and the other was a creature like Dah-marom, with roundy ears and pinkish skin and sort of yellow-colored hair. Weird.

Both of them were wearing strange, foreign clothes, nearly identical except for the color of the top part.

"Alright. We have no intel on the nature of this emergency. Uhura said the distress signal seemed amateur, like maybe it had been homemade. Best guess is we've got some Romulan rebels looking to flee the Empire."

"These may be highly dangerous individuals, Captain. It is also likely to be a Romulan trap designed to lure us here. I must protest the lack of security forces."

"Spock, this is covert ops. The less people we bring in, the less chance we have of getting caught."

"Then I must protest the use of the ship's two highest ranking officers for this."

"You're welcome to beam back up."

"I would prefer that  _you_ beam back up."

"Well, that's not gonna happen, Spock. How far are we from the complex?"

"5.6 kilometers."

"Great. Let's scan for lifesigns. Maybe we'll have better luck down here than our ship's scanners did."

Fear spiked through Saavik's side. They were going to find her. They were going to find her, and know that she had heard everything, and then they were going to be so mad and punish her and come for the camp and--

She was breathing way too fast. Her heart was thrumming and loud as a drum. Her ears were filled with a strange white noise.

She was being illogical. The Federation was good. Simpering, weakling cowards-- the Vulcans won't even eat meat, from any creature. They wouldn't hurt her. They wouldn't punish the whole camp for her transgression. This didn't even make sense, why was she still panicking? Why couldn't she calm down?

She hated hated this hated this hated this--

The men were standing in front of her.

Saavik was cornered on the ground, caught between them and a boulder. Her breathing sped up even further. She was shaking, tears slipping down her cheeks. She pulled her knees up to her chest, curling in on herself.

The funny-looking one crouched down to be on her level. "Hey," he said softly. "My name is Jim. We're here to rescue you. Did you send out the distress signal?"

Saavik could only stare at him in terror.

"Are you alone here?" he asked.

She was instantly wary, eyes narrowing.

Illogical. So illogical. They were here to rescue her, to rescue all the kids. They wanted this. They had built a distress signal hoping this would happen. Saavik had made a wish to ensure it, ensure it happened before anyone died. This was a dream come true.

She could trust these people. She was suddenly angry with herself. Why was she like this? Why was she still so scared when she knew in her head that she didn't have to be?"

"You are wearing an adult's meditation robe," the one called Spock said. Saavik clutched at it defensively.

"I found it. It's mine," she said in Vulcan. Both men seemed to freeze, color draining from their skin as they went still as statues.

"Pi'veh," Spock said. "Are there Vulcans here?"

" _I'm_ a Vulcan."

"How long have you been here?" Jim asked.

She shrugged. "My whole life. I was born here."

"What's your name?" Jim asked.

"Saavik," she said. "But they call me Subject 528."

"528?" Spock asked sharply. "How many Vulcans are here?"

"Now? Only 97," she said. She was calming down the more she talked, she noticed. The men hadn't hurt her. Even their voices were gentle. Well, Jim's was. "All the-- all the full Vulcans are dead, though. The only ones left are the hybrids."

"Hybrids?" Jim asked. "Hybrids of Vulcan and...?"

"Romulan," she said. She looked at them intently, gauging their reaction.

"There is no need to be wary," Spock said. "I am a hybrid as well. I am half-human."

Human. Like Dah-moram said she looked. Like the other man looked.

She had met three humans so far, then, sort of, and they all seemed pretty okay. Okay, so maybe in the strictest sense, she had met just one human, but Jim seemed nice. And Saavik had never felt compelled to describe someone as nice before.

"Saavik," Jim said. "You said they called you Subject 528. Who are they?"

"The Tal-Shiarr."

The Tal-Shiarr is the Romulan intelligence agency, feared throughout the galaxy. They're the most coldly efficient, brutal, and ruthless spies known.

The agency is named after a form of execution found in both Romulan and ancient Vulcan cultures. Tal-shaya. It's where the neck is snapped instantly, in a single, fluid motion. It takes years of practice to master, and requires the utmost precision.

"Is the Tal-Shiarr still here?" Jim asked gruffly.

"No. They all left. Their experiments were unsuccessful, so they left the planet. I guess they figured we would all just die," she said. "That was four days ago."

Both man exhibited palpable relief, though Spock was far more subtle about it than Jim.

"Can you take us to the other survivors?" Jim asked.

"That's not my decision to make," she said. She gave three ear-splitting whistles in quick succession, their agreed-upon signal for  _come._ She folded her arms and refused to say anything more until Sgon showed up.

Sgon came sprinting and panting. When he took in the scene, Saavik cornered up against a rock with two adult men in front of her, rage morphed and contorted his face. He launched himself at the two of them instantly.

There was a flurry of kicking and screaming and punches and then Sgon was being restrained by the two Starfleet officers, and Saavik was shouting for him to stop, it's okay, they aren't hurting her.

"They're here to rescue us!" she finished.

Sgon glared, and shoved out of their grip roughly. He took an offensive stance in front of Saavik, physically shielding her from them.

"We request that you lead us to the other survivors," Spock said.

Sgon laughed. "It's gonna take a hell of a lot more than that for me to take some strangers right to my kids."

"Your kids?" Jim asked. His voice was doing something strange.

"Yeah,  _my_ kids," Sgon folded his arms.

Jim looked him over appraisingly. "Alright," he said. "You're in charge. What do you need us to do?"

Sgon seemed taken aback. But he wasn't going to pass up this opportunity. "Hand over your weapons and communicators."

Jim obliged instantly.

"Captain--"

"Do it, Spock."

The Vulcan gave him a long stare, then handed a phaser and communicator over to the teen. Sgon pocketed all four devices.

"You're going to walk in front of us where I can see you," he said.

"We cannot lead ourselves to a camp we do not know the whereabouts of," Spock said.

"I'll tell you where to go."

* * *

They were beamed up to the ship six at a time. Sgon seemed torn between insisting he go first, alone, and insisting he go last after everyone else was safe and secure. In the end, he settled on first. It's always safest to assume that everything's a trap.

Then he gave Kirk the go-ahead to beam up the rest of his kids.

They piled every last member of the camp into the transporter room, and then Kirk gave the order for security forces to beam down in search parties and wrangle in any stragglers. He was going to save every last one of them, no matter what.

They were taken to medbay and looked over, twenty at a time. It was a grim task.

It took three hours for them to convince the kids that medbay was not a house of horrors and torture. Three of them still had panic attacks while in there. Eight refused to enter altogether. They had to be examined by nurses in the hall.

Sgon stood guard at the door to medbay the entire time. He refused to leave even when they told him he could. His eyes tracked Dr. McCoy wherever he went in the room. Several kids would come up to during each round of examinations. He would talk to them in low tones and give them hugs and reassurances.

"I'll be damned, Jim. These kids are fine," Bones said. "They're just in the early stages of malnutrition. The water they were drinking was clean and free of toxins. We got to them before any symptoms or starvation-related diseases set in. It's an honest-to-god miracle. The only thing I'm treating is their past injuries that never healed right. Looks like the Romulans put these kids through the wringer."

"How bad?" Jim asked.

"Bad. Worse than... This is the worst, most long-term evidence of torture I've ever seen. These kids are about as traumatized as they can come."

* * *

Jim talked to Sgon first.

He took him to a conference room and they sat down across from each other and staring, sizing each other up, not saying anything.

"I know you don't want to talk about it," Jim said. "But I need to know what I'm dealing with. I'm sure there are other kids who will be willing to talk. But you're their leader. So as one leader to another, I'm asking you for your cooperation. Help me so I can help you. So I can help those 96 other kids out there."

"What do you need to know?"

"What am I working with?" he asked. "I need to know what to expect from you kids. Saavik already told me some. She said you guys were experiments?"

Sgon nodded. "Hybrids. Designed to improve the Romulan race. They were trying to cross-breed telepathy over. Vulcans have it and Romulans don't. They did it by..."

* * *

Spock pulled up a chair next to Saavik's biobed. She was one of the last to be examined, so there was no rush for her to get out of it. It was the softest thing she'd ever lain in. So much better than the stone floor of her cell or the sharp rocks outdoors. It was heavenly.

Dah-marom sat on the edge of it, weightless, leaving no evidence of her presence.

"You're Vulcan," Saavik said.

"Indeed."

"Are we go there now? To Vulcan?"

"New Vulcan, yes."

"New Vulcan?"

"Vulcan-that-was was destroyed some years ago. The remaining population has set up a colony that is similar to the lost planet in most respects. You will be taken there and put up for adoption."

Saavik's head spun. She had spent years dreaming of a home planet that didn't exist, that she would never get to see. Her imagined sanctuary was decimated, had been for years.

"What's it like?" she asked.

"It is... similar," Spock said. "The colony serves its purpose. It is the people that matter."

"What are they like?"

"They are logical. Or strive to be," he said. "Vulcans attempt to free themselves from the grip of emotions. We follow logic rather than our feelings. This has allowed us to move beyond our violent past, and reach towards peace."

"No emotions?" Saavik said. "Not even fear?"

"Indeed not. One of the great Surak's most famous sayings is 'Cast out fear. There is no room for anything else until you cast out fear'."

Some nebulous, hopeful feeling lit up Saavik's chest. Fearless. Vulcans were fearless.  _She_ could be fearless.

It was better than anything she could have ever wished for.

"Will you teach me the Vulcan way?" she asked. "I want to know everything I can."

* * *

Spock took her to his quarters and showed her how to meditate, properly, and achieve a deeper trance than she ever had before.

He pulled out two woven mats for them to sit on and placed an asenoi in between the two. He poured a measure of incense into it and used a lighter to make it burn. A small flame wavered across the center of the liquid. The room smelled like peace. Saavik wanted to wrap herself in the scent and never leave.

Fearless. She would be fearless.

* * *

They were travelling at warp one to the New Vulcan colony. It would take twelve days to get there.

Saavik stuck to Spock like a shadow.

"Saavik, you cannot follow me onto the bridge," he said.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Yeah Spock, why not?" Jim added.

"It is highly unprofessional."

"There's no regs against it."

"The bridge is no place for a child, Captain."

Saavik fumed. "Pretty sure I can handle it, Spock."

Jim laughed. "You heard her, Commander. Consider it bring-your-kid-to-work day."

"Saavik is not my daughter."

He winked. "You keep telling yourself that."

* * *

"So how old are you?" Saavik asked Dah-moram.

"About 15,000 years or so."

"Fascinating," Saavik said. "What is it like, to be that old?"

"Eh. Pretty boring. I mean, it's not like I actually got to see anything interesting happen. I spent almost all of that time asleep in the lamp."

"So you don't like it?"

"No," she said. "I hate it, actually. It's so much better when I have a master. It's ironic, but that's the closest I ever get to freedom."

"Did you have parents?"

"No. My species isn't like that. We're born whenever a galaxy has need of us. We exist to serve."

"But why?"

"It is our way," she said. "There are legends of our creation. Some say we are not truly beings at all. That we are an extension of the universe itself, the part that intends to look out for its creatures. We are the Protectors."

"But no one has ever protected you," Saavik said.

"No, Master."

"Don't-- You don't have to call me that."

Dah-moram nodded. "As you wish."

* * *

Saavik was spinning around in an office chair-- one of humanity's greatest inventions-- while Spock gave a report to his captain.

"During the Va'Pak, children were given priority evacuation. The result was thousands of what humans call 'broken' homes and hundreds of orphans. With the repopulation crisis going on, there is a shortage of parents willing and able to adopt these children."

"And we're about to bring 97 more orphans to a colony that can't place the ones it already has," Jim said.

"Indeed."

"So I won't have a family?" Saavik asked.

"No, Saavik, I will do everything within my power to ensure that you do have a family," Spock said.

"I wish you were my family," she said without thinking. Dah-moram gasped, eyes widening, and Saavik froze. "I mean--!"

"Saavik," Spock said gently. "Do not regret your words. It would be an honor to be family to you."

"It would?"

"Indeed," he said. "I shall look into arrangements."

* * *

"Spock, are you serious about this? You're adopting Saavik?" Jim asked.

"I am certain," he said.

"Isn't this a bit-- I don't know, sudden?" he asked. "You've never said anything about wanting a kid before this."

"I have considered the possibility," he admitted. "If I were ever to do it, now would be the time. We are nearing the end of our third five-year mission. Surely you must be aware they intend to promote you to the admiralty after this."

"Yeah, and you to captain."

"Negative. I would not accept such a promotion."

"So what'll you do?"

"I intend to return to Earth and take up dual positions as a professor and ambassador."

Jim nodded slowly. "You'd be great at that," he said. "Oh god, they're gonna give my ship to Sulu."

"It is likely."

He groaned loudly. "He better not break her."

"Better Lieutenant Sulu than someone entirely new to the ship and to command, however. I understand the admiralty is looking to give Willard Decker a command of his own."

"What? That kid's practically in diapers!"

"He is years more experienced than you were when you first became captain."

He huffed. "Still," he said. "I've let myself get distracted. We were talking. We're both going to San Francisco when this mission's over."

"And I am adopting Saavik."

"Right," he said. He shook his head. "You as a father. I never would have guessed."

"And yet, here we are."

"Yeah," Jim smiled. "Here we are."

* * *

"Is there any way to undo it?" Saavik asked. "I never wanted to  _force_ Spock into adopting me."

Dah-marom shook her head. "The only way to undo it is to use your final wish to reverse it."

Saavik faltered. "I--"

"Hey. Listen. You need to understand something. If Spock hadn't already wanted to adopt you, your wish would have been a lot harder to grant. It would have taken a lot more time. If it wasn't something that he would have decided to do naturally, then it would have happened in some weird, convoluted way that  _forced_ him to adopt you. He chose to," she said. "Don't waste your last wish."

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

* * *

"Would you give up your immortality for a normal life?" Saavik asked.

"Instantly, if I could," Dah-marom said.

"You've given me so much," Saavik said. "Saved my life. Saved all those other kids' lives. Saved me from that place and gave me a family."

"You did all those things. I simply enabled you to accomplish them," she said. "You know what most people wish for? Riches and immortality. Though one human did wish for world peace once. People wish for their own greatness. You, though? You wished for... decency. What you deserved to have in the first place. I am honored to call you Master."

"Thank you, Your Excellency," Saavik murmured. "I am thus honored by you."

For a while, all was silent.

"If you could grant yourself a wish, what would it be?" Saavik asked.

"I'd wish for a mortal life and a family, like you have."

Saavik nodded decisively. "I wish you had a normal life and a family."

Dah-moram's eyes widened impossibly huge. Purple smoke began to surround her from seemingly nowhere. Her feet lifted up off the ground, face upturned. Smoke and wind swirled around her, faster and faster, sparks flying out everywhere.

The smoke disappeared in an instant and she dropped to the ground with a thud.

"Dah-moram!" Saavik rushed to her side and helped her stand. The girl clutched at her head as if in pain.

"It's so  _quiet,"_ she whispered. She looked down at herself. "I'm a human. I'm a human! You made me a human!"

"Is that okay?"

"It's more than okay!" Dah-moram wrapped her in a tight hug. "Thank you thank you thank you!"

Someone suddenly burst into the room. Sulu. "Are you okay? I heard... something."

"I'm fine," Saavik said.

His eyes settled on Dah-moram. "Who are you? How did you get aboard this ship?"

"I--" she looked to Saavik. 

"She's a stowaway," she said. "She's, uh, been here longer than I have. Since the last, uh, starbase."

Sulu's face softened. "What's your name, kid?"

The girls looked between each other.

No time to make up something.

"Dah-marom," she muttered, as quietly as she could.

"What'd you say? Damaro? Demora?"

"Yes!" she said. "Yes. My name is Demora."

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
